Once the war ended, she came to Kansas City with her husband. (I asked her once, "why, of all the places in the world, Kansas City?" She replied, as if no further explanation was necessary, "that's where Truman was from!")
Bronia stood all of five feet tall, maybe, and in her younger days was a slim girl. (By the time I knew her, she was quite round - she told me once she didn't care how much she weighed, but after her experience in the camps, she was determined she would never be hungry again. And she wasn't.)
After they arrived in Missouri, she and her husband opened a bakery at 31st and Woodland. The neighborhood there wasn't a bad one back then, but there are always a few bad apples about.
One day, a normal business day, a man came in with a gun. He pointed it at Bronia, standing behind the register, and demanded she give him the money.
Rather than money, she gave him a piece of her mind. What did he think he was doing? Didn't he know how thin their margins were? She had no money to spare! This was America, and she hadn't come this far to get all she'd built since arriving here taken away!
He'd picked the wrong bakery to rob. Back in the day, she'd faced down Eichmann. Some punk with a gun wasn't going to worry her any.
As she berated him for his lack of good sense and manners, she was busy packing up a bag of doughnuts. She finished up her tirade with a bit of compassion - surely, he wouldn't be trying to rob Bronia's bakery if he wasn't hungry. She came around the counter, put the bag of goodies in his free hand, and pushed him out the door, telling him not to come back again until he'd learned some sense!
I can picture the man, standing on the sidewalk, looking at the gun in one hand and the bag of bakery goods in the other. A bit dazed, not sure what just happened, he goes on his way, still puzzled and definitely well-chastened - never to bother Bronia again.
If only all robberies could end the same way. A well measured dose of compassion dished out alongside an eye-opening moment where the would-be-criminal learns to see others as something other than marks to be taken.
We might need more bakeries then, but we'd definitely need fewer prisons.
My mom was never in a concentration camp, but she is a tough lady. She was, in fact, a lunch lady. Once when I was in high school, two boys got into a fight in the cafeteria. These were big boys, seniors, football players, a head taller than my mother. She didn't tolerate fights in her cafeteria, so she grabbed them both by their colors (and the hair on their chests) and held them at arms length, giving them her "mom voice" and broke up that fight.
ReplyDeleteBoth boys had bloody noses, and one had a black eye, but my mom didn't have a scratch. They knew better than to raise a hand to this lady who dared to stand between them and tell them to have some respect for each other and their school, and ask them if they would behave this way in their own home, in front of their own mother. Later that day, the principle gave my mom a certificate of bravery.
My mom and Bronia have something in common. They understand the need to get the job done. To step in, to intercede, to stand up, to be a force to be reckoned with, to not be a bystander, and yes, to put some humanity in the forefront.